This case study explores students' physics-related personal epistemologies in school science practices. The school science practices of nine eleventh grade students in a physics class were audio-taped over 6 weeks. The students were also interviewed to find out their ideas on the nature of scientific knowledge after each activity. Analysis of…

Empathy entails basic cognitive processes such as the recognition of facial expressions and basic emotional processes such as emotional contagion, but also higher-order cognitive processes such as abstract reasoning about the other person's emotional states and higher-order emotional processes such as empathic concern. Thus, empathy must be…

Team teaching, where two teachers teach in the same classroom at the same time, while not a new concept, is increasingly being positioned and repositioned in research and policy literatures as central in advancing a range of valued educational goals. These goals include supporting inclusive learning for all students as well as supporting…

The implementation of genre theory in the business communication classroom could lead to the cultivation of critical thinking skills in students. The lack of a common definition of critical thinking skills across academia and the workplace creates a difficult end goal to pursue; therefore, teachers should consider explicitly teaching to the…

The emergence in recent years of heteroglossic conceptions of bi/multilingualism and the related construct of translanguaging has raised questions about how these notions relate to more traditional conceptions of additive bilingualism, biliteracy, and the overall academic achievement of minoritized students. In this article, Jim Cummins provides a…

Signed into law by President Barack Obama in December 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) replaces No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the 2001 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. NCLB and its Reading First mandate brought punitive accountability models and scripted core curricula into schools. Based on the language of…

Whereas the Interagency Language Roundtable Language Skill Level Descriptions broke new ground for assessing proficiency in foreign languages, the need for user-oriented (rather than assessment-oriented) proficiency scales has led, especially in Europe, to the creation of scales consisting of positively formulated "can-do" statements,…

Enthusiasts and evangelists of open educational resources (OER) see these resources as a panacea for all of the problems of education. However, despite its promises, their adoption in educational institutions is slow. There are many barriers to the adoption of OER, and many are from within the community of OER advocates. This commentary calls for…

Interest in quality is well established within higher education. This paper will critically review the most commonly used definitions of quality: fitness for purpose and value for money. It will point out that these two definitions are important but they ignore the emancipatory power of higher education and the development needs of academics and…

The goal of this report is to inform schools, families and communities about the potential of personalized learning and empower them with ways to support the shift to student-centered learning. The authors define personalized learning and describe why it matters. They highlight examples of personalized learning in action to show how personalized…

This research study examined the perspective of school administrators on the issue of bullying. Bullying behavior is an on-going issue in education that continues to plague educational communities. School administrators are responsible for fostering positive school climates conducive to teaching and learning. There was a gap in the literature…

In this article, I argue that new media is defined and situated within two distinct scholarly conversations ("composing in contemporary society" and "composing in academia") and has varied definitions supporting arguments made within these overarching conversations. Discussions of new media contribute to rhetoric and…

In the field of adult education, literacy is a contested concept, so it is not surprising that terms like food literacy are also highly debated. While some associate food literacy with individual food shopping and preparation, others look to it as a means to engage with larger issues of global import. Given that food literacy is a fairly new term,…

As illustrated by the articles in this special issue, the research into ethnic identity in adoption is making significant progress. At the same time, it faces new challenges in the definition of concepts, the use of appropriate methods of study, and the consideration of implications for professional interventions. This commentary offers additional…

The need for an integrated approach to studying bullying behaviors, both traditional and cyber, in adolescents is increasingly evident. The definitional criteria of bullying are well established in the traditional bullying literature and include (i) intention, (ii) repetition, and (iii) power imbalance. There is emerging evidence that these same…